Being the offspring of English teachers is a mixed blessing. When the film star says to you, on the air, 'It was a perfect script for she and I,' inside your head you hear, in the sarcastic voice of your late father, 'Perfect for she, eh? And perfect...
I can read Middle English stories, Geoffrey Chaucer or Sir Thomas Malory, but once I start moving in the direction of contemporary fantasy, my mind begins to take over.
I - and there are hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who felt on this subject as I do - have always liked my Celtic countrymen and disliked the English nation; it is a national trait of character, and I cannot help it.
Basic dictionaries no longer belong on paper; the greatest, the 'Oxford English Dictionary,' has nimbly remade itself in cyberspace, where it has doubled in size and grown more timely and usable than ever.
Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.
I think most of the world would like to be Scottish. All the Americans who come here never look for English blood or Welsh, only for Scottish and Irish. It's understandable. The Scots effectively created the face of the modern world: the railways, th...
Both my parents are English and came out to Australia in 1967. I was born the following year. My parents, and immigrants like them, were known as '£10 poms.' Back then, the Australian government was trying to get educated British people and Canadi...
I have always believed that the material world is governed by nonmaterial sources, so that in that sense 'English Music' is an exercise in the spiritual as well as the material. I have always been attracted to the Gothic and spiritual imagination, an...
When I was 19, I thought I wanted to be an English civil servant. It was the most exotic thing at the time - can you imagine, in the middle of the IRA bombing campaigns? I saw an ad inviting Irish applicants for an induction course, so I signed up.
I wanted to write plays. I was at Yale graduate school at the time for English literature, not for acting... I liked the idea of collaboration, and I thought if I'm gonna write plays, I should learn something about speaking the lines that I might try...
I did a year at Leeds, studying English. They basically threw me out, because I was taking too much time off to act. So I transferred to the Open University, because I could do it all online. By that point, I had admitted to myself that I had the act...
I wrote my first play as extra credit for my fourth grade English class. 'Can Helen Stop Smoking' was a satire on the ill effects of cigarette smoking. My friend Vicki Haugabrook played as Helen and I directed the show. At the time, my brother Vince ...
China's cinema has been rising for some time; it has more exposure, so my chances of becoming internationally known are better. But the first thing I have to do is learn English. If I can grasp the language, then perhaps I can think about the U.S.
I have no idea what it would be like to be just one thing and speak one language. I feel enormously privileged to travel and be able to mingle and speak to people that, had I only known English, I wouldn't have been able to meet.
[about Silent Bob's Russian Cousin] Jay's Lady Friend: He only speaks Russian? Jay: Naw, he speaks some English, but he can't all speak it good like we do.
Hans Gruber: [during a shootout with McClane, who is barefoot] Karl, schieß dem Fenster [sic] Hans Gruber: [Karl gives Hans a puzzled look. Exasperated, Hans repeats it in English] *Shoot* the *glass!
Soz: [reading from a magazine] "I love English cock... " Tuff: Do you? Soz: [jokingly] Shut it. [continues to read magazine] Soz: Fancy a "tit fuck" Tuff: No thanks...
Frank Morris: Tell me, you stopped killing white people? English: Why? Frank Morris: Well, next time I wouldn't turn my back on ya.
English: [after Doc chopped off his fingers] I heard about Doc, and I know why he did it. Somebody took away his painting privileges.
[first lines] Azim: He says "Christmas." So I say to him, [in Turkish] Azim: "Should we go shopping?" [English] Azim: The kid's 16. He says, "But uncle, it's Christmas."
Jack Crabb: [Narration; upon finding his white wife among the Cheyenne] It was Olga! She had never learned much English, but she sure as hell had learned Cheyenne!
